Screaming.
The world flashing brightness at her. Fading. Flashing.
Drifting darkness.
The smell of burning and salt seemed to soak the air. She would have gagged if she could.
Buzzing. Light.
Darkness.
"Help! Somebody help me!"
Nicole shook her head, pressing her eyes closed. Her head felt as though it could happily fall clean off if she tried to move, but she ignored it. She never drank, and so never had hangovers, but she could imagine one would feel like this. Or maybe it was a concussion.
She opened her eyes, but her vision was red and her right eye-lids stuck. Blood.
"Lovely," she muttered as she wiped her face. Everything there was dry...that was something.
"Hey! You there! Give me a hand!"
Nicole could hear someone shouting orders over the roar. Someone else screaming. She shook her head again in an attempt to clear it. A lot of people were screaming.
Nicole pushed herself up and spotted one man in a somber business suit. He was the one giving orders, grabbing men to try and help him life a piece of wreckage off of another man.
Dramatic, Nicole mused as she clambered to her feet and stumbled towards the group of men. She grabbed one of the metal corners, arranging her fingers as best she could around the sharp edges, and helped the men to heave the metal aside. The one who had been shouting pulled off his tie and wrapped it around the leg of the man they had just rescued, tying it off tightly.
This man is a doctor, Nicole thought. Emergency room doctors and surgeons...hired 20 for skill, 80 for efficiency under pressure. He's either medical or military.
She knelt beside the injured man with the tie around his leg and caught a glance at the 'doctor'. She was sure he was medical. Not enough muscle to be military.
She shook her head again as she wing sheltering them screeched and crunched. She and the remaining others looked to the Doctor for guidance, but he was already gone, along the beech helping a blond girl with a bulging, pregnant belly.
Nicole grabbed the first other man she could reach, a middle aged man in pale clothes and a nasty looking cut on his face, and grabbed the man with the injured leg. Together, they hauled him towards the tree line, away from the burning rubble and any plane wings that might just decide to fall on them.
The man headed back into the chaos to try and find some other way to be helpful. Nicole just sighed and threw her head back against the sand. She had done her good deed for the day.
The next thing she knew was dark, screaming unconsciousness.
OOOOOOO
Nicole didn't open her eyes again for, she assumed, a long time. It was cooler when she did, and the man she had helped was gone.
"Are you all right?"
She recognized that voice.
She opened her eyes, bracing them against the bright sun, and spotted the man from earlier. The middle aged one who had helped her move the injured man.
"Yeah," she muttered with less than no conviction. The man smiled faintly and reached behind him into some sort of a bag.
"Hold still," he told her as he pressed a cloth of some sort against the right side of a forehead. She winced at the pressure and the sharp sting.
"Ouch," she muttered.
The man smiled again.
"Head wounds always do hurt," he told her as he gestured to the cut across his own face. "That's because there's nothing there to cushion it. Just nerve and blood and bone."
Nicole made a soft "hmm" sound, mildly unnerved and mostly comforted. The man had something soothing about him. The thought crossed her mind that he would make a good baby-sitter to anyone with a very young child. He had the sort of voice children tended to find soothing.
"How do you feel?" He asked as he reached for another cloth.
She shrugged (or at least tried to).
"Not so bad," she told him. "I think I need to throw up. And everything hurts."
The other cloth was dipped in, Nicole assumed water and dabbed along the side of her face.
"You could be worse," the man pointed out. "You have a black eye starting, so I'll take a guess that you hit your head significantly hard. The cut's right here," he pressed gently on the first cloth. "An inch to the right and you would be dead with a caved in temple."
Nicole smiled at the mans attempt at a bedside manner. "Hallelujah, praise the Lord," she muttered. "What are you, anyway? Another doctor?"
The man smiled again and shook his head. "No," he told her. "I'm just someone who likes to spend time outdoors. And I'm very used to getting injured, so..."
Nicole made another soft sound of understanding and the man finished wiping blood away from her face. He paused, looking at her nose for a moment long enough to make Nicole wonder exactly what was wrong.
"What?" She asked at last.
The man gestured to either side of his own nose and explained "you have a cut on either side."
It was actually at that moment that Nicole noticed everything behind the man was fuzzy.
"My glasses," she realized. "I'm near-sighted."
The man nodded in acceptance.
"Maybe you'll find them at some point," he told her with a reassuring smile. "Keep the pressure on that head of yours. And rest. I'm pretty sure you'll live, but you might want the doctor to have a look at you when he can."
Nicole nodded. "I know who you mean."
The man glanced back down at her as though to re-assure himself that she hadn't died in the last half a second and then turned, heading towards a small campfire surrounded by people.
Nicole glanced around the beach as best she could. Without her glasses, the best she could make out was random shapes and colors. She spotted the pregnant girl standing in the shallow surf of the beech, and a man who was too large for even her to miss sitting on something brightly colored...a blanket or towel maybe...doing some sort of task. She couldn't see what, but she thought he was sorting things.
She pulled herself closer to the tree line and lay back against the sand again, drifting in a hazy half-sleep she had a talent for falling into at a moments notice, and used her hearing to try and pick out individual or vaguely familiar voices.
Her ears were bombarded with a cacophony of sound. The crashing surf, the fires people had managed to start, and of course the hubbub of, from what she understood by the moving blurs of color, about forty survivors. She tried to find one distinct voice to focus on. She couldn't hear either of the men she already knew, so she picked another. The one that stood out the most.
She heard a heavily accented voice saying something about a fire. It needed to be big. She listened harder and heard a response. British. Like her. Another man.
"What's your name?" The second man asked.
The first replied, but it was something she couldn't make out. A wave crashed at just the wrong moment, and all she heard was an 'S' and 'D'. The name sounded suspiciously like Sid.
Nicole smiled. Sid. Okay then, for the time being the guy with the fire and the nice accent would be called Sid.
"Hey," another voice called irritatingly close. The doctor. She mentally shunned herself for not hearing him.
"Hey," she muttered back.
"You have the head injury, right?"
She propped herself up on her elbows and pointed to the cloth, now attached to her head with dried blood.
"I do indeed," she agreed. "Did the old guy send you over?"
Jack nodded and pulled the cloth away from her forehead.
"You're a doctor, right?" She clarified.
He nodded.
"Thought so," she muttered before she fell silent and let Jack do his thing, prodding and poking at the painful lump on her head until he finally decided that she was all right.
"You'll live," he told her at last. "You have a mild concussion, but you'll live. Don't move around too much, rest a lot, and you'll be fine."
She nodded and fell back against the sand again.
"Cool," she muttered as she heard the man beside her stand to leave.
OOOOOOO
When Nicole woke again, it was light. She was relatively sure she'd had at least six hours of sleep, so it was most likely the next day.
She opened her eyes tentatively, but the blurriness was a little better, the stickiness was gone, and her head didn't hurt half as much as she'd thought it would. She stood, and found her feet to be remarkably steady.
She was under orders not to move too much, so she decided to honor those orders and not try to, say, run around the jungle. Beyond that she promised nothing. Her muscles ached, and she knew she had been sleeping in one position for far too long. It was time to get up.
She stood and glanced around. She couldn't make out much, but the soft quiet told her that there weren't many people up. She thought she could see someone dressed in pale clothes sat on the beach looking out to sea (although it could quite happily have been debris), and three people were crowded around the largest fire, fuelling it with sticks from time to time.
She headed towards the group around the fire, determined to make an appearance.
"Morning," she called to them. Two men and a woman.
"Good morning," one replied. Nicole smiled...she remembered that accent.
"Morning," the British man added.
"Hey." The girl that time. Nicole recognized the girl as soon as she saw her profile...the pregnant lady.
"I'm Nicole," she introduced herself.
"I'm Claire," the other girl told her, holding out a hand and taking a seat on the sand. "And I'm pregnant," she added as though making sure the new-comer knew she wasn't happy about the fact rather than the fact itself.
"I'm Charlie," the British guy told her as he joined the girls and Sid disappeared around the other side of the fire. "The quiet pyromaniac is Sayid."
Nicole smiled and nodded.
"Nice to meet you all," she told them as she sat a few paces from Claire.
A silence settled over the small group, and Nicole decided resolutely that she would not let it stay if she had to sing to break it.
"How is everyone doing?" She asked after a moment. "Am I the only one that got beat up in the plane crash?"
Various 'hmms' and 'nods' radiated from the group, but no one really answered. The silence settled.
"What's with the big big fire?" She tried again.
Sayid re-appeared from around the aforementioned fire, picking up another large twig from the pile he had and adding it to the flames.
"It's a signal fire," he explained. "It can be seen from a great distance, especially at night. The larger it is, the further it can be seen."
Nicole nodded and 'ahh'ed in understanding. "Fair enough," she murmured. "Your idea?"
Sayid nodded.
Nicole eventually decided to cheat.
"Just so everyone knows, I lost my glasses in the crash," she told them. "I'm blind as a sodding bat without them."
Claire laughed and Sayid added a soft "yes, my idea" to his nod.
"Awesome," Nicole commented, searching her mind for another topic. 'Why were you all in Sydney?' Seemed to personal, and Sayid seemed to want to be left out of it entirely.
"When's the baby due?" Nicole asked, figuring girl-talk was probably the safest way to go.
Claire glanced down at her belly, rubbing a hand softly over the bulge.
"About a month," she told the other woman.
"Boy or girl?"
Claire shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said after a moment.
"Do you want to know?"
Claire shrugged. "I've been doing astronomy charts and stuff," she explained, "but I don't really want to know for certain."
"I think it's a boy," Nicole offered. "You're growing straight out front. Girls tend to be more...outwards. To the sides."
Claire smiled and rubbed her hand over the bump again. "Really?"
Nicole shrugged. "My mom always had that," she told her. "So did my aunts."
Claire made a small "hmm," sound and looked at her stomach as though examining it as the silence started to fall again.
It was Charlie who broke it this time.
"Thrilling though baby talk is," he muttered as he stood, "I'm going to get some breakfast."
A moment later, he had vanished. Claire watched him go before adding "me too," and vanishing from her spot, leaving Nicole, Sayid, and the silence.
Nicole pulled her denim-clad knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, staring into the fire. She unfolded them restlessly, tucking her auburn-died-brown hair behind her ears. She bit her lip and kept silent.
Eventually, she huffed to herself and mentally muttered 'bugger it'.
"You don't talk much, do you?" She asked Sayid at last.
Sayid glanced up at her and poked the fire again.
"I don't have much to say," he told her. "Why should I speak?"
She shrugged and picked up a stick to add to the blaze. "To get to know people," she told him. "We might be here for a while."
Sayid dropped the stick into the flames and reached for another.
"Hence the signal fire," he pointed out. "The bigger this is, the better our chances are of being rescued."
Nicole made a face of agreement. She could see the logic in that.
"Still," she muttered. "It wouldn't hurt to try and get to know some people. I am."
She smiled and dropped the twig into the fire, then turned and padded across the beach.
OOOOOOO
She was stopped by the big guy she had seen sorting things the previous day.
"Hungry?" He asked and held out a wrapped package to her.
She smiled and took it. "Thanks," she said as she unwrapped it. It didn't look or smell particularly incredible, but it was food.
And, she noticed as she glanced back at the man, it was all in a smallish red back-pack.
"My pack!" She exclaimed as she made a grab for it. "You found my pack!"
She dropped the pack, grabbed the bemused man in front of her and hugged him, to the best of her ability.
"Erm...yeah," he muttered as she released him. "Just so I know, are you meant to be on like, meds of some sort?"
Nicole laughed and shook her head. "No," she told him. "That little red pack is mine. I had it with me on the flight; I thought I'd lost it."
The big guy glanced at the back-pack. "Oh," he muttered. "Okay."
He began pulling wrapped bundles out of it, but Nicole stopped him.
"No, no," she argued. "It's okay, I need to make the rounds and see anyone anyways. You can leave them in and I'll do it."
He glanced at her with, she thought, a little mistrust.
"Split the job?" He asked after a moment.
Nicole smiled and stepped beside him.
"Keep each other company," she decided. "I'm Nicole, by the way."
The man held out a pudgy hand. "Hurley," he offered and they began walking.
"Were you flying alone, Hurley?" She asked.
He nodded. "Yep," he told her. "You?"
She nodded as well.
"You got all cut up in the crash, huh?" He asked as he gestured to her face.
"A bit," she admitted, remembering her cut nose, bleeding head and black eye.
They stopped and handed out food to a twenty-something red-haired woman and carried on.
"I guess I'm lucky," Hurley continued. "All I got was a sore spot or two." He paused, then added; "that, and the bejesus scared outta me."
Nicole laughed. "Me too," she admitted as they handed out chocolate to another twenty something, this one male, dark haired, and relatively stubbly.
Hurley opened his mouth to say something else, but spotted someone and slowed down as he detoured towards her and sat down for a moment.
"Hey," he greeted Claire. She was sitting more or less on her own, writing in a small, Nicole assumed, diary. "You hungry?"
"Yeah." Claire smiled up at Hurley as he handed her one of the air-meals from Nicole's red back-pack. "Thanks."
"Any more…" Hurley gestured to her stomach. "You know, baby stuff?"
Claire laughed a little. "No," she assured him. "I'm-I'm okay."
Hurley paused as she looked away and eventually gave up and handed her some manner of plastic cutlery. "Well, hang in there."
Claire smiled weakly at him again. "Yeah," she told him. "You too."
He stood and made his way back to Nicole, but doubled back just before he reached her and handed Claire another meal before returning to his breakfast-buddy.
OOOOOOO
That night, things got really strange.
See, falling out of a plane was weird, sure. No one coming for them in the first day or two, that was a bit bizarre (not to mention terrifying). But that night topped it all perfectly.
It started with noises. Crashing and crunching from inside the valley, spooking animals and ripping trees. Sounds like crunching metal, and something suspiciously reminiscent of a fog horn.
"What was that?" One of the girls asked.
Sayid and Charlie wondered over, Charlie adding his own "That was weird, right?"
Nicole nodded. "Yeah," she breathed. "Yeah, right."
"Is that Vincent?" A boy exclaimed.
Another man Nicole assumed to be the boys' father answered, "It's not Vincent."
Moments later, as most of the survivors watched, the trees began to sway. Then bend. Eventually, several gave up altogether and broke. Whatever it was, it was pulling trees clean out of the ground.
"Did anybody see that?" Claire asked.
Nicole nodded. "Yeah."
Another man, the young, stubbly one Nicole and Hurley had offered food to earlier, stood and headed towards the jungle.
"Boone!" One of the girls shouted and started after him. He ignored her.
The sounds continued as Boone vanished into darkness on the beach, leaving the fog-horn sounds in the dark. Suddenly the sounds started again, from a different spot. And again in another.
Whatever it was, there was more than one.
There was a silence as the sounds began to die down, broken by thundering pulses, and Charlie's' frightened, sarcastic; "terrific."
OOOOOOO
The next morning, everyone had tried (and failed, for the most part) to sleep. Eventually giving up, Sayid, Charlie, Nicole, Boone, the blond girl, the boy and his father collected together on the beach.
They all swapped a look as though trying to decide what they should or should not say, before Nicole offered; "What do you think it was?"
The boys' father was the one who answered first. "Whatever it was, it wasn't natural."
Nicole opened her mouth to say something else, but was cut off by Charlie and the blond girl, swapping sun-lotion. She rolled her eyes and tried again, but Hurley arrived before she could speak.
"So. I was just looking inside the fuselage; it's pretty… grim in there." He sat with an expression of pure unease on his face. "D'you think we should do something about the…" His glance slid to the boy as he trailed off. "B-O-D-Y-S?"
Nicole smirked to herself as the boys dad turned around and asked "what are you spelling, man, 'bodies'?"
"B-O-D-I-E-S." The boy corrected.
Sayid backed up Hurley. "That sounds like a good idea," he added.
"No," the blond girl argued. "They'll deal with it when they get here."
Nicole watched her for a moment, studiously taking in her movements, he tone. The woman, whoever it was, reminded Nicole far too much of the people she had known at school. The ones who had always been so perfect with so much money. The ones who had absolutely everything except a brain or a heart.
Basically, the opposites of Nicole.
Nicole shrugged it off...she didn't even know this woman. But then, at the same time, she was a very perceptive individual. Her first instincts were usually right, and her first instincts on the blonde girl were not the best they could have been.
"I'm gonna go out and look for the cockpit," a familiar voice announced. Nicole looked up to see Jack with his back-pack on and heading along the beach. "See if we can find a transceiver to send out a distress signal to help the rescue team. You're gonna need to keep an eye on the wounded. If the guy in the suit wakes up, try to keep him calm, but don't let him remove that piece of shrapnel. Do you understand?"
Nicole rummaged through her mind. The guy with the suit...yeah, she'd heard someone talking about that. Had a big piece of metal in his chest, apparently.
"Yeah," Boone muttered. "Got it. But what about the guy with the leg? The ti-"
"It stopped bleeding;" Jack cut him off. "I took it off last night. He should be all right."
Boone accepted the answer, offering "yeah, cool. Good job."
Nicole wasn't sure why, but there was a certain hostility towards Jack that she could feel from Boone. Sort of a rivalry or a perceived threat. Nicole watched Boone a moment longer from the corner of her eye, his colors and face slipping in and out of focus.
It was almost as if Boone thought Jack was stepping on his toes.
"I'll come with," Charlie announced. "I wanna help."
"I don't need any more help," Jack tried to argue.
Charlie got up anyway, pretty resolute. "No, it's cool," he told Jack. "I don't really feel like standing still, so…"
Eventually, Jack nodded.
"Excellent," Charlie grinned.
The pair wandered off along the beach.
OOOOOOO
Nothing really happened for a while. Jack and Charlie, as far as Nicole knew, left, Boone checked up on the guy with half a plane sticking in him, and Nicole finally got a name for the Blond girl. Shannon. Given with the greatest amount of contempt Nicole thought the girl could manage. Yeah, Nicole wouldn't like her, she knew it.
Eventually, Nicole decided to head towards the only familiar and relatively talkative person she knew.
"Hey," Nicole greeted as she sat down beside the man on the beach.
He looked up at her with a small dose of surprise.
"Hello, Nicole" he returned and resumed staring out to sea. "How's your head?"
She smiled and rubbed it. "Sore," she admitted. "Feels sort like it's been stuck in a vice and squeezed."
"Theoretically," the man added.
Nicole laughed. "Who said theoretically?" she asked. "I wanted to know what it felt like when I was a kid, so a friend of mine tried to squish my head in a resistant materials lesson."
His face didn't change as he mused, "well that was stupid."
Nicole laughed. "I know," she agreed. "I did a lot of stupid things. It's the right of a child."
The man nodded and raised and eyebrow. :"I suppose it is that." He glanced up and the cloudy sky and asked; "did you spend a lot of time outside as a child?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "As long as I could manage. And I don't know how weather compared here to merry old England, but I think it's going to rain soon."
He glanced at her with a small smirk.
"I think you may be right," he told her. "You give it ten minutes?"
She paused, thought about it, and nodded. "About that."
The man smiled again and stared between the sky and the ocean, waiting.
OOOOOOO
Nine and a half minutes later, according to the man (apparently named John Locke), the rain came.
"Are you just going to sit there?" Nicole asked with a laugh as it began to pour down. She made no move to leave herself.
"Yes," Locke called back with his own smile.
Nicole laughed again and fell back against the sand, her arms out at her sides as Locke raised his in greeting to the weather.
Everyone else was significantly less happy to see the rain. They began running and shouting, sheltering anywhere they could (including Shannon, Boone and a vehemently reluctant Hurley heading towards the fuselage).
Then, over the roar of the rain, came the sounds again from the jungle, Screeching and crunching and trees being pulled up from their homes.
"There it is again," Claire announced, as another, older lady staring, wide eyed and afraid, into the jungle.
"Oh my God."